What has just happened in Michigan sheds new light on President’ Trump’ demand for loyalty: it makes sense, positive sense.

    During the U.S. Senate primary campaign season in Michigan, Representative Haley Stevens sharply criticized the Republican nominee Mike Rogers, accusing his and the Republican Party’s platform as out of touch with Michigan working families. Her criticisms were harsh and full of Democratic fervor that Rogers would empower GOP priorities on reproductive rights, union rights, and federal investments, that Rogers has aligned himself with Donald Trump and the National Republican platform etc.

    She touted her past Democratic credence, her background on Obama’s Auto Task Force, her works in supporting manufacturing jobs, union labor, and middle-class economic investments.

    Even after she lost her bid in the primary campaign to Abdul El-Sayed, she repeated her attacks on Rogers, stating that Democrats needed to elect candidates “up and down the ballot” to prevent a Republican takeover of the Senate.

    Then, only two days before November 3, she announced her endorsement of Mike Rogers, the very same Mike Rogers she had criticized a short while before as not serving Michigan and the U.S. Then, she told reporters that she had impeached the president twice and criticized the Republicans for letting him being unchecked.

    She cited her disagreements with the Democratic winner, El-Sayed, many of them are legitimate. That is incredibly politically naïve.

    In a political campaign, personalities clashes. Different stands in policies and philosophies may lead to heated exchanges and animosity. A candidate can swear, curse, name calling the other as a mother-something. He/she can even vote for the candidate of the other Party, like Mr. Stevens (assuming he is a Democrat like his wife) did. But publicly endorsing Mr. Rogers two days before the election, Ms. Stevens betrayed not just her beliefs, her works in her long political life. She betrayed her constituencies who voted for her because she is a Democrat who were meaningfully opposed to many Republican policies.

    Most importantly, she betrayed the Democratic Party. She has her own politicalplatform. She can change it anytime she wants. But she is just a member of a political Party, which has its national agenda, policies and ideologies to pursue.

    When she endorsed Mr. Rogers, did she think of the real possibility that Mike Rogers would become the 51^st Republican member of the Senate?

    That is where the contrast between Republicans and Democrats comes into focused. The Republicans understand that members have personal agenda, but they must respect the Party’s agenda and not do anything to jeopardize it.

    Some Democrats in Congess behave undisciplined, opportunistic, and probably are not true to themselves. They are politically camouflaged. When Haley Stevens ran against Mike Rogers, did she pretend to be opposing him? She declared that “we have to stand with (sic) country”.

    The Parties have their philosophies and ideologies. Just because you lose an election, which is a very normal result and expectable, you turn around 180 degrees, immediately, to endorse the other side’s philosophy and policy?

    Betraying the records of your past works and achievements to support the very person and Party you have worked against in your political life is just unfathomable as donating one’s Nobel Prize, a recognition of the receiver’s personal exceptional works and value, to another person who has nothing to do with it. It says a lot about mindlessness.

    The sorrow in this case is her act may lead to catastrophic result for her Party.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                           (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, X, and Facebook)

    President Trump is an eager risk taker, glorifying it and glorified in it. That explains why he decided to have his name affixed on the Kennedy Center. He could have named the White House the Trump House as it has nobody’s name on it. That would have been easier, but that would not be as challenging.

    The Trump name was already all over the country even in the Sin City in the dessert. By insisting on having his name on a building with a prominent name on it without giving a rationale as to why it should be done, he would test the loyalty of MAGA. There was a big risk that they would find their right mind and thwarted his desire. They have done a lot of things in his name such as chasing the immigrants to the borders, wrestling democratic members of Congress to the ground to eat dirt, or making life of his opponents unbearably difficult. But they love doing them and not necessary because of him. Carrying out the re-naming of the Kennedy Center showed their loyalty to him, and him personally. It was a bizarre decision but if members of the Kennedy Center Board voted unanimously to approve it, that meant they, and MAGA by extension, were absolutely loyal to him, strikingly so when the vote involved possibly illegal matter because it was not unauthorized by Congress.

    One stone would kill two birds. That naming decision would also cause, as it has caused uproar everywhere. To dismiss the uproar and overcome the colossal objection, from the Democrats for sure and the courts, would be a gratifying triumph and a display of power worth taking the risk.

    But risk taking, by definition, regardless of how carefully being researched and planned, carries risk. Many successful financiers have taken risk and lost big, Stanley Druckenmiller ($600M), Mat Ishbia ($603M), Bill Hwang ($20B) and that proves the point.

    In politics, there is something more important than just succeeding in a bet, something all politicians have conscientiously pursued: Legacy. Unlike legacy in finance or money making, political legacy commands more respect and lasts much longer. Nowadays, when the name Morgan comes up, people think of it as a bank, not John Pierpont. That name could conceivably disappear if the bank were absorbed by another bank, say, Russia’s Sberbank. But the public recognizes the names of Lincoln, Washington, Reagan, or Kennedy, and knows the persons, not the institutions, being behind those names. And these names, in all probability, don’t ever disappear.

    The president should not care about MAGA or the Republican Party. Not anymore. They would blame him for the tattered state of the party anyway. He should pay attention to what is most important and urgent for him as he has only two years to achieve: to build his political legacy.

    Since the president keeps working on other things, rallying for the losing candidates for example, that do not seem to help build his legacy, it is safe to assume that nobody has brought to his attention that notion, the notion of Lasting Political Legacy.

    Or they did but the notion did not go through his ears.

    That is where you, Natalie Harp, will play a crucial role: to convince the President to get out of that nightmare that too many people go after him and he must be on guards 24/7 to snuff out perceived enemies.

    There are a lot of things he can do during the remaining of his term to build up his legacy and make it definitely positive. Making the White House Ballroom into something fantastically beautiful and artistic for the world to admire and tourists to flock to like the Colonnades at Saint Peter Square or the Arc de Triomphe at the Place Charles de Gaule, is one.

    Natalie, you have the president’s ears. Drop a few sweet and persuasive words into them to convince him to cement his legacy by naming the Ballroom, not Melanie, not Baron, not even Donald, but some name resoundingly memorable such as:

    -Democracy.

    -Or Liberty.

    -Better yet, DEI.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                                       (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, X, and Facebook)

    In 2018, I wrote an article called “A Supreme Conspiracy – The Russian Connection”. Later, it developed into a book, “The Supreme Conspiracy”, in which I theorized about a conspiracy to divide the world into three spheres of influence that was proposed by Russia and endorsed by some radical but powerful elements in the U.S. The Russian proposal would allow Russia to dominate the stretch of land from Gibraltar to Vladivostok, the U.S. to control the Americas, and China the rest of Asia and the Pacific Rim regions.

    The developments of the past few years seem to have taken the “theoretical” out of the context and the conspiracy is taking shape.

     China in its traditionally reticent ancient wise way, has solidified its dictatorial grip on its citizens without giving in to the animalistic instinct of killing every real or perceived enemy as consistently practiced by the Russians and North Koreans, and tried to expand its influence using its mighty economic power. Russia, a pretended democracy, is and will never be a democracy even if its current president, Vladimir Putin, is no longer in charge. Its un-democratic nature is dictated by its vast stretch of territory and mostly un-enlightened population.

    In the U.S., Democracy has worked effectively to prevent dictatorship from happening. But since MAGA has acquired power, it has taken steps to plant the seed and done everything for dictatorship to take roots. Its argument, that a dictatorship is the way to prevent this country’s Christian traditions and Western civilization from being diluted if not replaced, but subtly hinting that immigrants have tainted the race, is persuasive to most white people. We will have to wait and see in November if they, the ordinary citizens not the billionaires or the privileged, still favor dictatorship over Democracy.

    The past few years have seen a deliberate tendency of the superpowers to act without care about, let alone consultation with other countries: Russian invasion of Ukraine, American attacking Iran while keeping Europe in the dark. Russia and America have seemingly consulted only each other, and probably China. President Trump confirmed that Russia would not help Iran in the U.S.-Iran conflict, as if it conceded that both sides of the Persian Gulf were American domain free from interference by Russia and even China.

    A quid pro quo must have, and seems to have, been in the work. Set aside the fact that America, out of the blue, created a problem for itself in Iran, if Russia refrains from getting involved in Iran, the U.S. must refrain from getting involved in Ukraine. That would explain the otherwise unexplainable: a pause of Starshield link network, non-delivery of the Patriots missiles to Ukraine, which is supposedly our ally, buying Diesel from and lifting sanctions against Russia, all these moves took place with meek opposition from some Republicans in Congress, which has enacted law imposing sanctions against, and prohibiting importing energy from Russia – sporadic voices in the Republican wilderness.

    One step is being taken to move closer to a dictatorial tripolar world: the President of the United States has proposed a meeting of the leaders of the three superpowers, Trump, Putin, and Xi – and no others, to take place in Shenzhen, China on November 18 or/and 19, where and when the APEC summit will take place, as if all other leaders were just golf caddies.

    The national media point out that American politics has now operated like the Mafia. It does not seem to be just American politics. The Mafia MO of the Dons from Chicago, New York, and Las Vegas calling a meeting of themselves to settle a dispute, say, in New Orleans, is being adopted internationally: the Dons in Washington, Moscow, and Beijing are calling meetings just among themselves to settle all disputes in the world.

    For probably the first time in history, Europe has seen its relevance slipping away, and Russia, the perennial Me-Too in the continent is about to call the shots. The new world order, as the trends indicates, will also see the U.S.’s power under MAGA reduced to just one third of what it has been since World War II.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                            (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, X, and Facebook)

    My wife and I spent 20 days in September in France, traveling through the country from Trouville-sur-Mer to Dijon, Chamonix, Nice, Avignon, Albi, Aix-en-Provence, and many far away villages and small towns, spending time in Paris two days when we arrived and three days when we left France. Being in that many cities and countryside, an impression was formed and I started understanding the feelings and emotion of the white billionaires especially those who came to the U.S.A. from abroadand made it big here.

    We were on a tour staying at good hotels and eating at good restaurants, but NEVER had a steak. Europe (or at least France and Italy, a country we had visited before) has a lot of things small. Cars are small, houses are smaller than in the US, highway lanes are narrower. The people are contented, quieter, and somewhat lethargic.

    And skinny.

    They are tall for sure and probably meet President Trump’s requirement of employment of 6 feet high. But when standing next to our male tour-mates from the U.S., Canada, and Australia, they looked less macho-looking and on the lesser side in terms of weight.

    The absence of steak offers the best explanation for the state of their bodies.

    A few years back, we were in Italy. The only time we had good steak was when we dined at the Machiavelli Winery in Tuscany. The rest of the tour offered no meat – and the food, well, forgettable because I don’t remember any. If I ate anything over there as tasty or nearly as tasty as In-n-Out hamburger, I would never forget.

    Now, in France we encountered the same problem. I agree with my wife that it must have meat but either meat is more expensive than other fares or the country has a secret don’t-treat-the-tourists-well policy. I have been immerged in the American culture for quite some time so I may not understand French culture as well as I have hoped. But I observe that they discriminate severely against Canard (Duck) in favor of Oie (Goose). You find duck foie gras everywhere but not goose foie gras even in high-end restaurants, not because they political-correctly oppose the force-feeding but because the duck foie gras production is less complicated and less expensive. Have you ever heard of a French who avoids gourmet food just because it is more expensive and more complicated to produce?

    At the Fish Market in Trouville-sur-Mer, we saw a lobster lying immobile on a bed of ice (naturally less expensive than the ones swimming in a tank) priced at 98 Euros per kilo, about $50 a pound at the current rate. In an Oriental grocery store in our area, a pound of lobster costs $16(+-).

    No doubt, in America, food is more available in terms of variety and quantity and more affordable.

    At the end of the trip, I persuaded my wife to spend a little more money to dine at an upscale restaurant in Paris. The décor was beautifully Grand Siecle with a modern twist, the service was attentive, and the menu was satisfying as it listed steak, which was the item I ordered. When I ate it, I looked at my wife but did not say anything to disappoint her but I was disappointed. Was I pretentious to feel that the steak was not as good as an American one? I dismissed the negative thinking and continued enjoying an exceptionally beautiful evening, our last one in Paris.

    A week after returning to the U.S. we found ourselves at a steakhouse. The taste of their steak vindicated my feeling about Europe’s.

    Then, a thought occurred to me. I think that I understand why the billionaires, especially the ones who came from outside of the U.S. and made it big here, have strong emotion and feeling when it comes to immigration. It has a lot to do with cultural fighting but also, in no small part, their feeling about the state of the body of their first cousins in Europe. They feel indignant and outrageous that their European cousins look skinny, don’t have good steak, and don’t readily have goose foie gras while their distant cousins, the immigrants, from South America get fat and big because they can get good steak anywhere in the U.S., and a short trip to Las Vegas would serve them, wearing just a T shirt and jeans, foie gras d’oie.

    The fight could have been carried out methodically, quietly, justly, and effectively. Because of the emotion and deep feelings of the privileged, it has been ferocious and cruel that is avoidable.

    Now, the fight is spread, intentionally, to Europe.

    The solution as I have advocated before: A strong, prosperous, and independent Europe. It has a large and fertile land mass, talented inhabitants, exceptional strategists and fighters, pride, and high spirit. That it can be on its own and become a strong pillar in the new world is an accepted fact. It just needs a will.

    And if you need land to raise cattle and oies, learn from the Japanese: buy or rent lands from other countries with vast unused lands such as the US, Australia or Canada. You can even perform a diplomatic feat by negotiating with Russia for such productive deal and, why not, a side deal regarding the Ukraine problem.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                         (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, X, and Facebook)

    AI is possibly the real and formidable adversary of the billionaires and the privileged class.

    They had ruled society, the multitude, for ages by physical force. When revolution after revolution, Bastille, American Revolution etc., rendered physical force impractical or even a Trojan horse as the multitude possessed more physical power, the privileged class turned to information as a tool, or rather made information the exclusive tool, to maintain their seat on the Upper or Superior Mat, like the Vietnamese like to say, and colonize the rest of society.

    To gain an advantage, information needs to be developed or gathered. More importantly, the information must be kept secret. That is what the privileged class has been doing – to keep information from ordinary people and keep them from being equal.

    The technical or special knowledge is of course possessed by the experts: how to build an airplane, why the water on Santa Monica beach sometimes should be avoided, etc. Ordinary people don’t need or want to know, but the information is available and readily accessible.

    Other information that are important and the public is entitled to know as they affect their life, however, have been deliberately kept from them: Who killed President John F. Kennedy; or who is included in the Epstein infamous list; or why Boeing, the company that produced the flawed 737 aircrafts that by 2024 experienced  234 aircraft losses, 529 accidents, and 5779 fatalities got $4.2B from the U.S. Government to develop a space vehicle and an extraordinarily successful company, SpaceX, was awarded only $2.6B to do the same thing; or why huge amounts of money always go to already wealthy zillionaires, and ordinary folks continue to struggle to pay exorbitantly-priced gasoline to take their children to school, etc.

    AI has cleared the field and made information readily accessible to the public to the point where in a few minutes talking to AI, a Joe would conceivably be able to know about most of everything that a billionaire knows. No knowledge would be special knowledge reserved for billionaires. And that is a clear and eminent danger to the billionaires and the ruling class and that is why they don’t want to regulate AI, as anything regulated will become public information accessible to ordinary people.

    AI would make life’s problems simpler and easier to understand, and questions could be answered quickly.

    One party could feed to AI such questions as how can I cheat my opponent to win this election? The opponent in turn asks would the election system present any flaws that a cheater could exploit? Were the above-mentioned questions answered truthfully, there would be no rampant accusations of fraud, cheat, or steal flying around to muddy the political atmosphere for the advantage of one party or another.

    There is now a tug-of-war between two factions: AI should or should not be regulated.

    Ordinary people of course want it to be regulated. Keeping it unregulated means to keep the multitude away from it and reserve it for the billionaires as their exclusive privilege. It is conceivable that a regulated AI would answer these above-mentioned questions honestly, but unregulated AI companies controlled by billionaires would not allow their AI to answer questions they don’t like.

    It has been said that the Human Brain is God. The tech billionaires have proved beyond doubt that their brains are scarily superior. It was Archimedes who declared that “Give me a stand, and I will move the earth”. AI clearly gives the proverbial stand to the tech billionaires who will certainly become an omnipotent God to control the earth and soon the Universe.

    So, the choice for us, when we are still able to choose, is AI as an equalizer rather than an AI providing a stand for the billionaires to conduct themselves as God.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                           (This article appears on thelephongjournal.com, Facebook, and X)

Why so many ridicule or criticize Natalie Harp so harshly?
Everyone is endowed by Nature with a combination of certain abilities. She, like her critics, just wants to use them to gain the most benefits. She swoons over Donald Trump the president of the United States, the guy who wagged his finger and half of the White House complex, the proud symbol of America for years, disappeared, or even kisses his ass, so what? What wrong with it? Honestly, nothing wrong with it.
In life, especially fast-moving American life, where to aim your arrow is essential for success. If luck gives you a chance and puts you next to the president of the United States, if you pay attention to your detractors and are reluctant to kiss his ass (and kiss it publicly if that gives you more benefits) that would be a fatal mistake of your on-the-make-life that would kill your one-in-a-life chance to succeed – to find your place in the sun as Sammy Davis had hollered for years.
Look at the big boss. Didn’t he know he did not say correctly about a lot of things? Of course, he did but why should he care if his lies are pleasing like singing an oldies song to the ears of the over-65-year-old voters? Are you, righteous critics, sure that sticking to the high road with ethical and moral principles is the sure way to success? Since 2026, or even before, MAGA has shown you that to be wrong. They saw them as unimportant or have probably turned them into being unimportant. Nothing succeeds like success and if you fail to gain power, I repeat, you are irrelevant.
Criticizing success is, frankly, nothing but jealousy babbling. If Ms. Harp succeeded in banning some media outlet from the White House press corps as rumored, it would be euphoria and proof that she is competent in doing what she has been doing – dropping effective words into power’s ear and moving the world. And lugging the duffle bag next to the big boss only enhances the perception of being powerful.
I have said it first, proudly, before Peter Thiel, in a post on X that the president’s people, many of them, have exhibited incompetence. So, when the billionaire/investment genius/political thinker/social and political influencer/advisor-to-president Mr. Thiel said the same thing on September 24 on MD Meet podcast, then there is a common observation of such incompetence.
But somehow, such incompetence blends in well with the current American
political landscape and makes incompetence normal and acceptable. Imagine the mistakes committed by the intelligence agencies and the defense department under, say Leon Panetta, it would have caused uproars so deafening that heads would have rolled off those agencies instead of walking about nonchalantly.
MAGA has determined for itself that the U.S., or even the world, should not be what it has been. They don’t want to improve it. They want to remake it into something different. So, incompetence may be unimportant or perhaps the weapon to achieve the goal of turning society upside down, destroying it to build a new one just like bulldozing the East Wing to build a new what-ever.
Putting the name of President Donald J. Trump on a building specifically built and named after President John F. Kennedy to commemorate him was clumsy and weird but has served the purpose of whoever wanted to do it: as long as MAGA is the boss of the town, the Kennedy Memorial apparently stops being one; clumsy or not, three to four years may help the public to forget its name.
Caveat populus: you have a choice with your votes: to enable and continue the MAGA world where there is no such a thing as human society but only mortal combatting clans, and act like a true MAGA member: everyone for themselves. Or ask like John F. Kennedy what you can do for your country but not what your country can do for you – your clan.
JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

In only two years and a half, MAGA has remarkably achieved many of its goals – easily.

For years, the U.S. clamored for other NATO’s members to increase their defense budgets as the U.S. carried some 62% of the total NATO defense spending. Faced with MAGA’s policy of “America First”, EU has been pushing for strategic autonomy, independent from the U.S. In other words, they are not relying on the American umbrella of security, economic and military, anymore. MAGA has got its wish: no more European piggyback on American expense.

The seemingly erratic declarations or statements insulting to its allies, the exorbitant tariff hike, and the effort to transform the U.S. into a police state have built a wall around it. It is now separated from the world, MAGA can do whatever they have wanted to do to transform the U.S.A. into a dictatorship. With or without a king, MAGA has run the country like a kingdom, treating Congress, let alone Democrats, like a side show.

It has decidedly defeated Woke politics and dreams: no more world influence or pressure on America politics to promote and protect minority groups, no more social ideology according to the world’s wisdom. There is now only one block, a solid block of influencers or deciders in American politics and society: the white block – white extremists or supremacists. The US Supreme Court sees to it that the Voting Rights Act will not hinder the Republicans from increasing their seats in Congress, potentially keeping Congress a long-time if not forever puppet. The rationale of the Louisiana v. Callais decision: Louisiana must act COLOR-BLIND.

When President Trump appointed several women to important cabinet positions, it led to the belief that the macho MAGA finally recognized that misogyny was wrong and women would be treated equally by MAGA.

Tulsi Gabbard looked serious in white. Kristi Noem with her rolled-up sleeves, hair flying with every step she took, was an unusual image of the head of a security agency that was supposed to be macho – unusual but still unknown and therefore acceptable.  Pam Bondi was (and still is) beautiful, poised, ramrod straight, sharp mind, and sharp tongue, all the attributes of an Amazon woman ready and able to confront chauvinism, giving hope that she would prove to be a formidable contribution to the women’s effort to assert their right to be treated fairly and justly.

Then, things unraveled in unexpected ways.

Ms. Bond stated early and openly that she was ready to release the Epstein files, all of them. She had just reviewed them and obviously was outraged by what she saw and read. There were only two groups of human beings in the files: young litle girls and men, much older and much more powerful men. There was only one game, if it could be called a game: the little girls trapped within the walls (brick, mortar, and other kinds of walls) and the men just did to them whatever and whenever they wanted, sadistic, sordid, base. The action called for was clear for Pam: inform the public then prosecute the wrongdoers.

Then, the AG dragged her feet. She postponed the release, and when she did, she released the files, redacted, selectively, as if her decision were influenced, not by what was right or wrong or women needed to fight back, but by some things or some ones else. If that were the case, everyone could guess the gender of these some ones.

    But her responses and attitude at Congressional hearings seemingly supported men’s entrenched belief that did serious damages to the Equal Right Movement: Women do not have equal substance.

    Congressional hearings are supposed to be a forum for the witnesses to provide answers or information to Members’ questions. The witnesses do not always answer all the questions, and not answering a Member’s question is not exactly difficult requiring high art. Her predecessors, Merrick Garland and William Barr avoided answering questions they did not want to answer with aplomb. But at her Congressional hearings, she behaved and spoke as if she were in an irate-neighbor-fighting-her-neighbor’s dog-messing-her-lawn. No grace under pressure, even though as a woman she should possess more grace than, say, her boss president Trump.

    The second woman cabinet secretary, Kristi Noem was asked by a Congress’ member a simple question if she had sexual relations with Corey Kowandowski. Her response was: “I am shocked that we are going down and peddling tabloid garbage in this committee today.” And “That kind of garbage has been refuted for years, and it is offensive that you have brought that up.” She should have learned from the master. On 60 Minutes, the President stated simply and succinctly, “I am not a pedophile”.

    What was missing in her answer was the “I”: It was refuted but “I” did not refute. The Occam Razor answer “No, I did not” would have done perfectly well for her. A listener could not help thinking that her dodging of the question indeed confirmed her extra marital affair.

Such lack of grace under pressure and roundabout talking, as read by their detractors, are signs of psychological weaknesses.

After they were gone, one could argue that MAGA had executed a Machiavellian maneuver to deal the Equal Right Movement a severe blow and bolster the misogynists’ prejudicial and sadistic position that the right place for women would be at home, in the kitchen, and in bed.

But their best and most striking achievement is to show how vulnerable and weak Democracy is and how to subvert it without having to fire a shot or even to violate the law.

JOHN P. LE PHONG
(This Article appears on Facebook, X, and thelephongjournal.com)

 

    The law, 40 U.S.C. §8106, says that no building or structure MAY BE erected on any federal reservation, park, or public grounds in the District of Columbia without express authority from Congress.

    The Trump Administration has demolished the White House’s East Wing and tried to build a ballroom on its ground without notifying Congress let alone getting its approval.

    The National Trust for Historic Preservation sues the Administration to block its construction for lack of authority to do so without Congress’ approval, citing the above-mentioned U.S. Code.

    To sue the Administration, the National Trust must have standing. That is the law of the land.

    To have standing to sue as the representative of its members, to quote Chief Justice John Robersts’ dissent, an organization such as the National Trust must show, among other things, that one of its members, Alison K. Hoagland, historian, historic-preservation scholar, would have standing to sue in her own right.

    To serve as the basis for her standing, Ms. Hoagland declares that she lives in Washington, D. C., and expects to visit the neighborhood around the White House about once a month. Having to view the finished ballroom the government is constructing would cause her to suffer injuries to her aesthetic, cultural, and historical interests because she finds the scale, height, and massing of the government’s design distasteful.

    The majority of the Court does not find her declaration sufficient to constitute standing because mere offense, disagreement, or distaste does not qualify as a concrete and particularized injury. It therefore sides with the Administration and allows the lower court’s stay of the construction of the ballroom to be terminated.

    The chief justice, John Roberts, a conservative judge himself, vehemently and totally disagrees. To say, he argues, that Ms. Hoagland’s injury is essentially: “I don’t like looking at the new building” is badly mischaracterizing her claim because Hoagland’s injury suffices for standing. A historic preservationist such as Hoagland can be aesthetically injured in a concrete, particularized way by the transformation of a historic building that she frequently enjoys.

    He cites court case precedents such as an environmentalist can sustain a concrete, particularized aesthetic injury from the extinction of a particular animal or the transformation of a particular forest or river that he regularly enjoys.

    He points out the irony of the majority’s decision, “With the Court’s rejection of Hoagland’s standing today, however, it now is the case that ‘I want to look at a crocodile’ can adequately answer the ever critical ‘what’s it to you?’ question of Article III standing, while ‘I want to look at the White House’ cannot – no matter how distinctive the particular viewer’s interest in looking at it may be.”

    Once again, this Court does not care much about stare decisis (to stand by things decided) or precedents when they are presented with an inconvenience, in this case, the National Trust’s lawsuit to prevent the administration from changing the historic landscape of the White House Compound.

    The Chief Justice’s discourse on the importance of the historic White House, “an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture” and why Ms. Hoagland’s standing to sue the Administration is on solid ground, is worth reading in full in his dissent.

    The most striking statement in his dissent is the sentence, “That construction (of the ballroom) is likely unlawful”, citing the Code mentioned at the beginning of this article.

    So, the majority skips that extremely important part of the lawsuit to dwell on the standing issue, even though their reasoning to dismiss Ms. Hoagland’s standing is shaky at best, to let the construction moving forward.

    Why the Trump Administration is in a rush to tamper with historic landmarks in the Capital? To literally build a legacy with buildings to make up for meager political achievements?

    Why this Supreme Court acts as if it were the Administration’s enabler?

    Concerned citizen, “Officer, the arsonists are burning that building down.”

    Lawman, “What’s it to you?”

    Citizen, “Uh, it is unlawful …”

    Lawman, “Move along and don’t bother them. You have no standing.”

    Whatever way to look at the majority’s decision, it is not judicial but clearly political.

JOHN P. LE PHONG                                                                                                         (This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

    In 2024, the polls favored Kamala Harris. Donald Trump won the election with a comfortable margin.

    The pollsters asked questions. The voters responded and their responses were recorded. MAGA had poisoned the political atmosphere with racist or bigoted propaganda, Us versus Them. Ordinary voters were persuaded by them but did not want to be thought of as being racist. So, the answers could not and did not reflect the true sentiment and intention of the responders.

    The Democrats should not allow themselves to be in a celebrating mood just because the polls show the approval rating of the president is low and therefore Republicans would lose the House and the Senate come November. In a street interview by a news show, a white woman, formerly a MAGA voter, said that she was not very happy with high mortgage rate and rent, high price of groceries and gas, and the war and would not support the Republicans. She added that her husband would continue to support the president and the Republicans. In how many white Republican households, the wives will defy their husbands at the voting booth and vote Democrats? Only if they had never listened to Tammy Wynette’s Stand By Your Man.

    The MAGA’s propaganda may have been so entrenched that it can’t be dislodged immediately and easily. But the bad economy, tariffs, and the war may change their dark view tainted with racism of our society and help bring back Republicans to mainstream thinking and open their eyes to the rapid deterioration of American influence in the world, especially among its previously loyal allies and friends.

    AI has helped MAGA tremendously in their plotting and scheming. But reality indicates that our power, military or otherwise, has its limits in dealing with our enemies or unexpected circumstances. The plotting to preserve white supremacy is destructively divisive making us weak and has no justification morally, biologically, ethnically, evolutionarily, or anthropologically. It should disappear for the sake of a strong healthy and productive humane society, and to preserve our American way of life – not the billionaires’ way of life.

    Ironically, the advance of AI should convince the most diehard racists that there

is no ranking of races.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)

    Hunter Biden, a son of the Democratic President Joe Biden, sat on the board of a foreign country and was paid $50,000 a month for five years. He was investigated by the Republicans relentlessly who kept his laptop in the headlines for several years but his indictment for tax evasion did not have anything to do with the laptop. They skillfully turned a storm in a teapot into a hurricane for Hunter and his family.

    Jared Kushner worked extensively with the Arab world while in the government. Six months after he left his official position, he secured Two Billion Dollars from the Saudis for his investment fund. Not a peep from anyone on the Republican side.

    MAGA’s legal knowledge and skill in navigating the labyrinth of American laws and regulations were striking compared to the Democrats’! Hunter was a loner adventurer in the making-money wilderness and easily caught by the wolves. Kushner was working in coordination with his and his in-law’s family with the support of legal and financial experts and no less his father in law’s influence, more like a global network, the modus operandi of modern world’s mega money-makers. That is how the sitting president and his family made billions of dollars in 2025 while he was, and still is, in the White House, and sit pretty in New York and Palm Beach.

    It may offend ordinary people’s common sense, but it may not be illegal. They study the law carefully and push the envelope to pursue billions, not the $50,000 that poor Hunter was accused of.

    That says a lot about Donald Trump. He is a genius and has succeeded in spearheading a new brand of politics, you may call it the Randian politics of self-interest as a virtue, heretofore, an anathema to success in politics in America, or in any democratic political system, and made it work so well for him.

    But, as I said in a previous article, his absolute dominance of the Republican party leaves no room for growth for the next crop of leaders of the party.

    Where can you find another Republican who made 30573 false or misleading claims during his first presidential term and still got the votes to win a second term? Where can you find another politician, let alone a Republican, who raises the price of gas 35.8% higher in a year and a half, started a war without asking Congress and at the same time reported personal (his and his immediate family’s) revenue of over $2 billions, and his party dare not raise its voice. Even Democrats could not say an effective word except to vent their frustration by saying they were outrageous. Where can the Republican party find another leader who has relatives, sons, and son in law ride his coattail to fabulous rich?

    What Republican, or any politician in the world, said on TV this about his political opponent: “Look at that face! Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president? I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?” and won the presidential election in the United States of America, which was supposed to be the world’s leading society of civility?

     Can any member of the Republican Party command the devotion and passion, bordering on infatuation, of a 35-year-old blonde, white lady? Could any of them, when they reached 80, be able to excite a 35-year-old beautiful woman to write them intimate letters? It is a rare magnetism that Donald Trump alone in the Republican Party possesses. And that could explain why he incredibly won in 2024 as the white ladies in their 70s, his age, and probably those in their 60s, or 50s, or 40s, and of course in their 30s, the age of his devotee, would probably have never voted for Democrats when he was around.

    Would any of his successors, pretend to be a Trumpian, or even more Trumpian than Trump? Probably a lot. Just look at the Republican political landscape in Arizona.

    But would a Vance, Rubio, Jordan, Paul, Cotton, Hawley, Britt, Lake etc. be able to exhibit a bizarre aura and carry his banner and culture, or would they be burdened by his legacy and become just copycats clumsily shouting MAGA slogans louder to get attention but do not possess his ability? Would they be able to insist that an Olympian had destroyed the pond even if his government’s lawyers dismissed the charge and looked pale in intimidation? Would they be able to turn around the investigation of the Epstein Files as he did? Would they be able to make a lot of billionaires even happier than they have been with his actions?

    Would any of them without the charisma and luck of Donald Trump be attractive enough to the voters to overcome the excesses of the President?

    The picture looks bleak.

JOHN P. LE PHONG

(This article appears on X, Facebook, and thelephongjournal.com)